The Department Of Statistics Malaysia has released the growth rate of of the gross domestic product (GDP) for last year, and just as the economists predicted, Malaysia has missed the 4% growth mark set by Bank Negara Malaysia last year.
In a Facebook post from the Department of Statistics Malaysia, they released a chart revealing that Malaysia’s GDP growth for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023 capped at 3.7% and 3.0% respectively.
Before the reveal, economists have already stated that they expect the GDP growth to miss the target set by BNM, due to multiple factors.
According to a report from NST, economists has already expected that the fourth quarter and full-year figures will miss the growth target, which was set at 4.1% GDP growth and 4.0% GDP growth, respectively.
According to Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd’s Chief Economist, Dr Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid, a weak external demand was the chief culprit that affected the growth of Malaysia’s GDP last year.
This can be seen in the contraction of the manufacturing industrial production index (IPI) of 0.2% in the fourth quarter.
His sentiments were echoed by OCBC Bank’s senior Asean economist Lavanya Venkateswaran.
However, Lavanya was more optimistic about Malaysia’s forecast, as she said that there could be a modest upward revision to the fourth quarter GDP growth estimate to 3.6%, instead of the estimated 3.4%.
Malaysia University of Science and Technology economics professor Geoffrey Williams said that the Statistics Department’s advance estimates are often a good indicator of the final outcome.
He explained that the reason for the missed expected growth is due to the fact that the estimate assumes the economy will return to pre-pandemic levels.
However, Williams was quite optimistic about the coming year, saying that he expects Malaysia to reach the targeted growth in 2024.
